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Tuesday, June 10, 2008

The Failure of RHIOs and ONCHIT

Quote of the day: In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. - George Orwell

Today' iHealthbeat reveals why government is inept in many regards. What starts out with innovative ideas quickly becomes bogged down on internal machinations, politics and the inability to adapt to rapidly changing market forces. As I stated fouryears ago HIT and RHIOs could not be produced from the top down, rather it would develop from the bottom up as we are witnessing now. Ihad compared the development of our national telephone network as an example. The many 'Bell' companies eventually merged into one company serving the majority of the United States.

Perhaps the most important item to come from ONCHIT was it's stimulus to develop CCHIT standards. David Brailer's vision may come true but in a different manner than proposed.

As I had stated and predicted it would not be necessary to 'reinvent the wheel', that many of the requirements already existed in the market place. ONCHIT chose to ignore this fact and became involved and invested in it's own thought process.

During the last four years I became the principal involved in an attempt to develop a "RHIO" in Southern California. The outcome was less than devastating. The REPORT written by David Kibbe and published on The Health Care Blog (Matthew Holt) articulates the absolute failure of RHIOs except for one or two which existed prior to ONCHIT' arrival on the scene.

During the past three years I worked with a multitude of vendors at the grassroots level. Except for large to medium sized groups and IPAs the market remains very fragmented.

ONCHIT has largely ignored the present market.

"It's as though these people and institutions never heard about medical search, health social networking, wikipedia, Google Health, Microsoft HealthVault, or the Continuity of Care Record standard. To read the ONC Strategic Plan you would never know of the existence of HealthGrades and the other quality and transparency reporting sites on the Internet; the SureScripts network that was used for 100 million ePrescriptions last year,; the hundreds of thousands of lab results delivered to medical practices over the Internet using Web applications every day; or the thousands of medical practices that have deployed Web-based technology for billing and claims administration, Web portals for communications with their patients, and clinical systems for helping with care management. " (from the report)

"The second biggest misstep taken by ONC has been to entirely remove the consumer from the equation, and to ignore the force of the analogy that is powering consumer/patient impatience, even anger, at the calcified hairball our health care industry has become. That is the analogy with consumer experiences of convenience, affordability, and service excellence from companies across a wide spectrum of industries that have effectively integrated the Internet and the Web into their DNA, from FedEx to NetFlix, from Southwest Airlines to L.L. Bean, and from CNN to iTunes. Education, commerce, banking, the financial services, and personal communications are all online.

Too much of health care is still offline, and nothing in ONC's obsolete strategic plans reflects this reality or recognizes the progress that is being made despite ONC's befuddled time warp.

Will somebody, please, push the "reset" button on health IT policy inside the Beltway?"

Disclaimer

The opinions in this blog or other forms of social media are solely that of Gary M. Levin M.D. Dr. Levin has no financial interests in any medical devices which are discussed or which appear in the blog. Commentary taken from other sources are either quoted or referenced with attribution. Dr Levin does not endorse, nor give financial support to any political organizations.